


Through the Looking Glass

by ishie



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: sheldon_penny, F/F, F/M, Gen, Genderswap, uses characters from unaired pilot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-20
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There exist a mind-boggling number of universes. At least, we assume there are. Up is up, no one understands how everything began — some think they do but they don't, not really — and the Star Wars prequels were a textbook example of man's inhumanity to man.</p><p>But for everything that happens in this universe, it goes just slightly off-course in another one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Through the Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

> I used the three sets of fifteen image prompts from the 2010 Paradox-o-rama at [sheldon_penny](http://sheldon_penny.livejournal.com/).
> 
>  _xi_ might be triggery for violence/abuse

There's a theory that goes a little something like this:

There exist a mind-boggling number of universes. Some would say it's an infinite number but no one can prove anything. Typical, right?

We live in one, or maybe all of them. Maybe we only live in a few. At any rate, everything that has ever happened, or could have happened, or might have happened - in short, everything that has ever, will ever, and never could possibly have happened will happen or has happened or could someday happen in one or several or all of these.

That's not a very good explanation but it will do. But you already know this, don't you?

 

 

Somewhere in all of that happening, there are constants. At least, we assume there are. Up is up, no one understands how everything began — some think they do but they don't, not really — and the _Star Wars_ prequels were a textbook example of man's inhumanity to man.

But for everything that happens in this universe, it goes just slightly off-course in another one.

Like this:

 

 

**a. the one that some people know**

Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.

Girl takes weeks and months and _years_ to figure out she picked the wrong one.

It's a tale as old as any you've ever heard, full of laughter and crying and pretty much wall-to-wall sex at certain points. There may have been some robots. There are definitely way too many references to _Star Trek_.

Sure, there aren't any swordfights or daring galactic battles but it seems plenty dramatic at the time. And you can't go wrong with happily-ever-after.

 

 

But maybe, it goes like this:

 

 

**b. the one that you don't know**

Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.

Girl doesn't let herself get distracted by nice and friendly but goes straight for prickly and weird.

After all, girls like a challenge, don't they? That's what _Cosmo_ tells you anyway.

Soon, the girl starts throwing _warp speed_ and _transporter range_ and _the Prime Directive_ into daily conversation. There are definitely robots in this one. Slightly less wall-to-wall sex, but maybe not.

This one's way less dramatic, but it ends the same way.

 

 

That seems a little too pat, though, doesn't it? Perhaps it was neither of these. Maybe it's like this:

 

 

**c. the one that no one wants**

Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.

Girl moves back in with her ex-boyfriend two months later.

 

 

Or this:

 

 

**d. the one that the robots like**

Girl lives out her days in perfect ignorance of the world around her.

Boy dreams of girls, but not this girl.

Other boy never existed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that's not why we're here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The building blocks of life are the same as those that make up the rest of the universe. Men and women with brains that run better than any you've ever known have figured that out, and most of the rest of us are just along for the ride.

Once upon a time— isn't that the way these things are supposed to start?

Once upon a time, there was nothing. And then, suddenly, there was everything, or something on its way to everything at the very least. Here in this universe, there was expansion and swirling matter and maybe a lightning strike that got lucky. We are all made of star stuff, as the saying goes. But we're more than that, somehow. Or we think we are.

We come from brown-black sludge, from the absolute dregs of the primordial world. But somehow in all that has happened and never could happen between then and now, that spark, that tiny infinitesimal moment of chance, brought forth everything that we are. Everything you can think of and everything you can't, all of it has been.

You can call it a miracle, or a series of lucky breaks. You can call it whatever you like, but the heart of the matter is that we are. We are here, our entire world only the tiniest speck of reflected light in the vast emptiness.

When you put it like that, well. Everything gains a different perspective, doesn't it? We see only slivers of the universe in which we exist, just days at a time.

Or maybe it's just moments. Different moments from the same day all across the universes, as though someone has lifted a veil between the worlds and beckoned you forward.

You want a glimpse? Just a little one?

Or have you seen it all before?

 

 

**i. the day with the roller coasters**

It wasn't likely to help but Penny went for it anyway, interrupting Shelly before she could really get going. "Can't this crazydoodle reminder wait until everybody gets back in the car?"

Shelly frowned. "They've heard it plenty of times. _You_ have only heard it once, and there are additional guidelines that didn't apply to Disneyland." She cleared her throat and started again from the top.

"No water rides before lunch or after three in the afternoon; otherwise we won't have sufficient sunlight, heat, or time to dry off properly. No food that we can't see for ourselves how, when, and with what degree of hygiene it is being prepared. No locker rentals — if you can't carry it all day, leave it in your hotel room. We don't have time for lollygaggers. No roller coasters for at least an hour after lunch—"

"Oh, come on, even I know that's an old wives' tale—"

"No, that's Raj's gag reflex."

Raj made a face like it was embarrassment that kept him from protesting and not that he knew no one would believe him.

"—and the first, and I use this term _very_ lightly, attraction that we will visit is located directly to the east of the entrance."

Penny and Raj rolled their eyes in unison when Shelly passed back to them two of the maps she'd stayed up late the night before to mark.

"Since none of the designers of the park bothered to contemplate the proper efficency traffic flows between the rides and the shopping areas, we'll have to double-back at some points in order to stick to the evacuation schedule that will accommodate everyone. Now, if you'll turn over your maps, we can discuss the itinerary for days two and three—"

 _Evacuation?_ Penny mouthed at Raj, who didn't bother to try to mime it for her. Instead he opened his map and buried his head in it like it held the answers to life, the universe, and everything.

Was Shelly starting in on her disaster planning kick again? Penny unfolded her copy of the map to see the precise red circles drawn around the restrooms scattered around the park. " _Oh_ , you're talking about the Magic Potty! Honey, everybody knows that's always the first ride. Those Big Gulps always seem like a good idea until you get about five miles down the road."

Leah had opened the driver's side door while Penny was talking. She settled into her seat, forehead wrinkled above the thick frame of her glasses as she sucked at the straw of her super-sized slushy drink. "What are you talking about?"

Shelly ignored her to twist around to look at Penny, her face scrunched up in the kind of suspicious look she hadn't leveled since she thought someone was emptying her energy drinks whenever she turned her back. "Are you sure you haven't talked to my mother?"

"As if," Penny scoffed, crossing her arms and sitting back with a sour expression that would give her a headache if she kept it up too long.

Hannah's head suddenly popped up in the window next to Penny. She shoved the giant, dripping plastic cup at the back of Shelly's head, keeping her narrowed eyes trained on Penny the whole time.

"Since when do you talk to her _mom_?"

"I don't!" Penny protested. Not since Mary Cooper told her to knock it off with the energy drinks, that was.

 

 

**ii. the day with the parade**

Penny shifted in her folding chair and looked around for somewhere to set her bottle of water down. Every square inch of space around her was covered in either feet or someone else's blankets or children who couldn't sit still with the prospect of free candy raining down on them on the immediate horizon. In front of her was the curb, and then the faded asphalt of the road. She couldn't lean forward far enough to reach either anyway.

"I told you to let me fix your chair for you," Cooper said smugly, taking a long drink from his own bottle and slotting it back into the holder dangling from the end of his arm rest. The plastic cording creaked as he shifted to avoid touching the woman crowding in on his other side.

The marching band came into view around the corner, just a few seconds after the pounding drums started reverberating off the buildings lining Main Street.

"I'm not going to have you waste that much time on something I'm already too big to sit in comfortably," she said before the enthusiastic but not particularly skilled music drowned out her voice.

Cooper looked down at the huge curve of her belly, his smug expression softening into the familiar and only occasionally infuriating look of pride. As if his body was the one doing any of the work.

The bottle was cold through the fabric of her sundress and the baby shifted restlessly as the band marched in sloppy formation in front of them and down out of sight around the next corner. Cooper thumbed through the bicentennial booklet he'd picked up at the historical society booth.

"Why can't they put the parade order in here? How much longer do we have to wait for Missy and—"

"Shhh!" Penny hissed and knocked the booklet out of his hands. "Here they come!"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, they're marching in place and waving pom-poms. It hardly requires me to be silent!"

But he let the argument drop there, too busy leaning forward and trying to see around her bulk. He pushed up out of his chair a few inches, and a huge goofy smile. "Here she comes!"

Penny whooped, beaming and clapping her hands in time with the girls' cheers as they paused in the middle of the street to do the routine all four squads had been practicing for weeks. Missy caught her eye and smiled. When the routine was over, she stepped up to nudge the shoulder of one of the pee-wees in front. The girl's tiny face nearly split in two with a gap-toothed grin to rival her dad's when she spotted Penny and Cooper on the curb. She stepped out of line with the rest of her squad, blonde pigtails bouncing as she waved with her whole body, nearly taking off the nearest girl's head with her baton.

"Looking good, baby!" Penny shouted. "Keep your knees up!"

Cooper kept clapping until the girls disappeared the same way the band had, then sat back to play back what he'd recorded on the video camera attached to the gorillapod on the other arm of his folding chair.

Penny wiped her forehead and finished off the bottle of water even though the baby was just centimeters away from tap-dancing on her bladder. "You ready to go?"

"I suppose we could stay for the clowns," Cooper said, his eyes bright and excited now that he'd forgotten to pretend he didn't want to be there.

 

 

**iii. the day with the collision**

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry!" Penny yanked her cart away, crashing it into the shelves on the other side of the aisle. A cascade of cans tumbled to the floor and she carefully picked her way over to the man she'd knocked down. "Are you okay? I totally didn't even see you there!"

"No, you wouldn't have," he agreed, surprisingly happy for a guy who'd just been flattened by a cart full of frozen pizzas and margarita mix. He ignored the hand she held out to help him to his feet and played with the black and silver device in his hands.

He ignored her for so long she felt stupid for still standing there with her hand outstretched. "Uh, can I help you up or something? Should I call a manager? Are you hurt?"

"No, thank you. This is precisely what I anticipated would happen." He pressed another button, and vanished.

Penny stumbled backwards. "What the _hell_?"

"May I have your name?" the man's voice asked from somewhere. "You won't be named in my acceptance speech of course, but—"

"Jesus, I have got to quit drinking," Penny muttered.

 

 

**iv. the day with the shift change**

Saturdays definitely weren't her favorite, especially not as the last bits of what passed for summer rushed headlong into the grey, dreary, ashen autumn.

It seemed like whole lifetimes ago when loved ones brought flowers, and sat at bedsides, and cradled limp hands in their own. Now, all there was was Penny and Jorge and the doctors Khan, and row after row of beds that never stayed empty long.

As they started the hand-off briefing, Jorge passed her a cup of coffee and the log. "We had another six brought in last night from the front. Two didn't make it, and the rest probably won't last the day."

Like Penny, Jorge wasn't a nurse or a doctor or even a medical technician. He'd been brought in by another soldier and left to bleed on the front desk one morning. When he'd recovered from his wounds, he'd taken one look at Amitabh and Hillary struggling to keep the clinic running. Struggling to keep men and women like him alive for just one more goddamn day. He'd shuffled out into the alley at the back, and burned his enlistment papers under a sky streaked purple and black. In the year and a half since, he'd become a master at stitches and setting broken bones, and his were the only hands that stayed steady enough to clean the grit and dirt out of ragged burns.

Penny drank the coffee like a shot and put the mug down on counter as she flipped through the log. They both knew what she was looking for — what she was always looking for — but it had been months since she'd stopped asking out loud. Back in that other lifetime, when not blowing a line at audition was the hardest thing in her world, she always wished she'd had the knack for instant memorization.

Now she wanted it so she could be that someone somewhere that she prayed would find her one day, with a name on the tip of his or her tongue and hands to steady her when this soap-bubble world of not-knowing finally collapsed around her.

She drilled him on what had been done through the night, what shape the dispensary was in, whether Amitabh or Hillary would make it out of the surgical bay any time soon. Her ring flashed under the fluorescent lights as she doled out the ever dwindling supply of painkillers and antibiotics into sturdy little paper cups.

Jorge squeezed her elbow and turned away.

 

 

**v. the day with the party**

Sheldon felt a tug on the leg of his costume and looked down. Two very small children dressed in not altogether terrible mass-produced Flash costumes were staring up at him.

"Who are you supposed to be?" the boy demanded. The mask obscured most of his face, and Sheldon didn't recognize the chin or jawline.

Granted, he wouldn't have been able to place it even if he had. The only person he knew in the entire state was his roommate, who definitely did not have any offspring, let alone any this forthright.

" _Danny_ ," the girl whispered. "Mommy said don't be rude!"

"That wasn't rude! Jill, don't be such a baby."

Sheldon cut in before their disagreement, or Jill sneaking a hand up behind the boy's head, could escalate into anything involving shrieking, indian burns, or tears.

"I'm the Doppler effect," he said. He wasn't sure whether it was appropriate to explain to them what the Doppler effect was or if he should do what his sister recommended and just shut the hell up once in a while.

"Oh, like on the weather," Danny said, nodding like it was all very familiar.

"That's not exactly—"

Jill interrupted breathlessly to explain, "Daddy used to say the bad words at the weather all the time afore he got deaded."

"You're not supposed to talk about that," Danny yelped. "I'm telling Mom!"

"You're telling me what?"

Sheldon whirled around to find a blonde around his age standing with arms akimbo. She mock-glared at her children, then turned a soft smile on him.

"They aren't bothering you, are they?"

"Not yet," Sheldon admitted.

He'd meant for it to be dismissive; brusque, even. But the bright-haired woman only ratcheted up her smile and laid a hand on each of her childrens' heads.

 

 

**vi. the day with more than one ending**

It was chilly that morning, at least a dozen degrees cooler than normal and the skies as colorless as mid-winter. She almost wondered if she were somehow controlling the weather.

Penny watched her breath fog in the early light and stamped her feet on the ground to warm them up. She'd been out walking since before the sun rose. Unable — unwilling to stay in bed any longer, she'd pulled on her clothes in the dark, tiptoed downstairs and through the silent kitchen. Went out into the pre-dawn gloom but couldn't make herself go into the barn, the paddocks, the garden.... She couldn't make herself set foot in any of the places that belonged to her parents, filled with memories of her childhood.

Places that belonged to her now. To her and her alone.

She wrapped her arms around her aching stomach. She knew she should head back to the house soon; her aunts would worry if she didn't turn up for the breakfast they would be in the middle of preparing already.

As if all she needed was a good meal and all her cares and troubles would melt away.

What would Sheldon say when she went back inside, she wondered. When she went back up to the room where he had slept while she lay awake and stared at the ceiling, until the sound of his calm, even breathing drove her from their bed and out into the cold. Would he keep pretending not to understand her upset, or would their now-shared grief be enough to bridge the gap that had grown between them?

 

 

**vii. the day with the accidental date**

After a long day of rude, pushy customers and temperatures better suited to the face of the sun, Penny stepped off the elevator juggling two bags of groceries, a huge stack of mail-order catalogs, and what had to be the world's heaviest purse. It was no wonder she didn't notice the crowd blocking the hallway until it was too late.

"Well, now, who's this pretty lady?" bellowed the giant of a man whose chest she'd barreled right into as soon as she stepped off the elevator. He winked down at her, but let go of her arm as soon as it looked like she was steady again.

"George, leave the poor girl alone. She looks like she's had a rough day" A much smaller woman elbowed him out of the way and started pulling bags and catalogs right out of Penny's hands. "Here, Sheldon, take these."

Someone reached out to take the groceries, and the woman took Penny by the wrist. Before Penny could protest any of it, she was being swept along in the middle of the group: down the hall and through the open door of the formerly empty apartment directly across from her own. All around her, people insisted she do this and that and of course she didn't want to cook for herself after whatever kind of day she'd had.

"Really, it's very sweet of you but I really just want to go home. No, thanks, I don't want any barbecue—"

"Oh honey, of course you do!" A tiny, white-haired lady materialized as if out of thin air and pressed an icy-cold bottle of beer into Penny's hand.

"I don't—"

Sheldon, the man who'd taken her groceries into the kitchen, made a face at her over the old woman's head. "It's easier if you just let them think you agree, then sneak out when the fighting starts."

A shout exploded from the far side of the room. "For _God's sake_ , Mary!"

A muscle in Sheldon's jaw jumped. "That would be now," he said.

"But you've got all my food," Penny said, at a loss for anything less idiotic to say. This time she didn't bother trying to fight when he started herding her toward the door, nor when he followed her out into the hallway and closed the door behind him, blocking most of the shouting.

"I'm not buying you dinner," he said, crossing his arms and staring her down like she might try something funny if he looked away for a second.

"Uh, I wasn't asking?"

He dropped his arms to his sides. "Good. How do you feel about dumplings?"

 

 

**viii. the day with the blockbuster**

"Sweetie, maybe you should, um..."

It was taking everything Penny had to keep the giggles from escaping. She didn't know what it was about Leonard that made Gilda's brain short out, but it rarely produced anything this out of left field. But whatever it was: friends don't let friends go to the movies wearing leather miniskirts and gladiator stilettos.

Especially not when the leather miniskirts and gladiator stilettos make one friend want to throw the other one down on the bed and go to town.

Gilda ran a hand over her hip and grimaced. "It's a bit much for a matinee, isn't it?"

"Yeah, just a little. Plus, the leather creaks and if you ruin Sheldon's acoustics he might put acid in your Coke."

 

 

**ix. the day with the game**

The main dining room was completely empty and probably would be for a while. The real crazy rush wouldn't start until almost three; there were _some_ advantages to living in a university town, and working in a restaurant that didn't show any sports channels on game day was definitely one of them.

Penny finished rolling silverware and heaved the bin up on one hip with her good hand after flipping the stack of unused napkins onto the top. She'd made it three-quarters of the way back to her station when the front doors opened, setting the bells to jingling.

"Welcome to Mac's," she called over her shoulder. "Go ahead and sit anywhere. I'll be with you in a second."

She started to fill a glass of ice water, then snuck a glance at the person settling in at the table in the corner. It was the doctor, rolling his chair back against the wall so he had a view of the whole room — the same table he always took. She ducked back into the alcove before he caught her looking.

Penny dumped out the water and dropped two cherries in the glass instead, floating them with fizzing soda all the way to the rim.

 

 

**x. the day with the sunscreen**

He refused to remove either of his shirts. Loudly, and at great length. In fact, his only concessions to the whole beach-going experience were to switch his usual crazy-colored socks for a pair of soft white athletic ones, and a surprisingly well-worn pair of khaki cargo shorts.

"Missy," he offered in explanation when he noticed her staring as he finished checking the things packed in his bag. "My choices were to buy these, or be pushed off the end of the pier. Can we go?"

"Sure, yeah," she said. "Katie's pulling the car around. Did you pack your backup sunscreen?"

Lee thanked her for the reminder and bent over the table to double-check.

Luckily, Penny thought, he obviously didn't know _exactly_ what had caught her attention or he would have stepped back in his room to change.

 

 

**xi. the day with the last straw**

It wasn't her worst idea ever, throwing everything she owned in the world into the trunk of her car and not looking back until she hit the state line.

The problem was, it wasn't exactly her best either. She should have waited until she had more cash. Or until she could trade her car for one that was less unreliable. She could have gone to the neighbors for help, the way they'd been hinting every time they caught her alone in the hallway. Or she could have— Or, or, or. There were a thousand stupid reasons pounding through her head, making her vision blur every time she caught a glimpse of the bruises on her arms.

Somewhere near Denver she pulled off the highway and checked into the least seedy-looking motel she could find before she passed out at the wheel.

The clerk didn't hand back her driver's license right away, taking a few extra minutes to check out her wrists where they poked out the oversized sleeves of her sweatshirt.

"Just the one night then?" he asked, sucking on his teeth and peering at her face. "Or you gonna need more than that?"

Penny tried not to get angry, to tell him to mind his own goddamn business. She took a deep, shaky breath and smiled instead, the muscles in her face feeling clumsy and out of practice. She concentrated on pulling her hand back from the counter, nice and slow so it didn't look like she was trying to hide anything.

"Oh, no," she said, "we'll be moving on in the morning. My- uh, my husband has a job interview in Kansas City on Monday. He's waiting in the car," she added in a rush. She could hear the lie in her voice as it fell out of her mouth.

The clerk smiled, like he didn't notice the hesitation, and gave back her license, along with the keys to the room and a handful of brochures. "There's some stuff in there might interest you, if you're looking for a place to stay longer someday."

Penny choked out a thank you and ran back to her car, pulling around to her room at the back of the motel. She stripped the grungy comforter off the bed and kicked it into a pile on the floor. Cranking the air conditioner up as far as it would go, she wrapped herself in the blankets and fell asleep facing the door.

It wasn't until the next morning, when she reached for the toothpaste and knocked over the stack of brochures, that she got the message the clerk had been trying to send.

In between two identical glossy printouts for competing family-style restaurants was a faded, black and white copy of a flyer for the local women's shelter, with a number hand-written in red across the bottom edge.

She crumpled it up and threw it in the can under the sink. It took another hour before she felt in control enough to brave the front counter to check out; she needed the security deposit back or she wouldn't have bothered. But for once she was lucky: the clerk at the counter was a young woman, with bags under her eyes and dirt under her nails. She didn't look up from the computer keyboard once.

It wasn't much of a victory, if it even qualified as one to begin with, but Penny guarded it jealously all the same.

 

 

**xii. the day with the trial run**

Leonard's sigh was loud enough to wake the metaphorical dead. Sheldon ignored the noise, plainly meant to get a rise out of him, and kept scooping.

"What the hell are you _doing_?"

Apparently ignoring Leonard was out of the question. Sheldon put down the plastic spoon and wiped his hands with the wet rag he kept next to the cutting board.

"I'm practicing my jack-o-lantern carving skills. We won't be shown up by the children in 2-A this year, I promise you that."

"Now? Sheldon, come on."

"Am I encroaching on your personal space?"

"...no." Leonard furrowed his brow further and settled his shoulders like he was about to defend his doctoral thesis (a waste of breath, naturally).

"Are you allergic to the scent of pumpkins?"

"No."

"Am I in any way disturbing you or impeding your ability to carry on with your day?"

" _No._ "

"Is this, as Howard says, more of your 'bitching and moaning because you can't keep a girlfriend'?"

Leonard didn't say anything, just turned on his heel and stomped back to his bedroom. He punctuated the action by slamming his door.

"Oh, I was right!" Sheldon tried to commit Leonard's exact expression to memory for the next time it inevitably surfaced.

 

 

**xiii. the day with only one ending**

Where it started, no one ever knew for sure. The president told the country not to worry, that the nation's top minds were working on a cure and all would be well in this God-blessed-America in no time, but he couldn't hold back a tiny cough in the last second before the camera cut away.

As for the nation's top minds, Penny knew at least six of them, and five were all out of their minds with fever. She prayed for the first time in years, hands clasped so tight that it hurt to pull them apart again. Her throat was raw with unshed tears. At least, she hoped that was why.

On the third day, she closed the guys' door one last time, then covered over the cracks with duct tape. Bernadette, Kripke, and Howard were still inside but there wasn't any point in trying to take care of them anymore. It was a kindness to just let them slip away. It was the only kindness left.

Leonard had never come back from the university that first night. She had begged him not to go, to stay inside with everyone else while they waited and watched. Now, she tried not to think about what must have happened to him.

Sheldon was as limp as a sack of grain and twice as heavy as she helped him across the hall to her door. Raj and Leslie were already sprawled on the floor inside, near the windows, their grayed faces turned up toward the breeze.

Penny bent over double as the coughing gripped her lungs and choked all the air out of the room. She dropped to her knees and thought about the wide-open fields at home, lying under the hot summer sun and listening to the cool, sweet wind through the trees.

She wondered what the world would look like when they were all gone.

 

 

**xiv. the day with the team**

Penny leaned back against the windshield and stretched, then clasped her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. The sunlight was golden-red through her eyelids, but the heat of the semi-trucks still burning on the other side of the road far outstripped its warmth.

Static crackled in her ear, followed by whooping and excited shouts.

"We did it!" Howard yelled. "Holy shit, it actually worked!"

"Of course it did," came Sheldon's artificially amplified voice, the rotors of the chopper muted in the background. "There was only a seven percent chance of any individual component failing."

Howard yelled something back but it was swallowed up by Raj's, "We're heading back to base now, Captain. We have the package." Almost as an afterthought, he added, "And Leslie brought Leonard."

Kripke was still standing in the middle of the road holding the traffic sign. He shouted over the roar of the flames. "Shouldn't we clear out before the cops get here?"

On the heels of his question, a rumbling sound rolled toward them from the sparks flying up into the air at the end of the block as poles crashed to the ground and power lines criss-crossed the intersection.

"Never mind!"

Penny fished a cigar out of the pocket of her reflective vest. She held it up in a mock salute at the police cruisers now idling on the far side of the latest mess they'd wreaked on the streets of Los Angeles.

"Ah," she sighed. "I love it when a plan comes together."

 

 

**xv. the day with the audition**

"Um, why don't you start at the top of page seven?"

Penny nodded at the short man who'd called her onto the stage. He turned his back on her and walked back a few rows to sit with a bunch of other people she couldn't see very well through the glare of the footlights.

"Do you want me to—"

"Just do Marian," another man's voice called. "We've already got a Catherine."

Her heart sank. Catherine's were the lines she'd been practicing. She knew Catherine. She could live inside Catherine, or at least pretend long enough to maybe get the job and then work her ass off in the few short weeks between the auditions and opening night.

Marian, though. Marian was just about everything she couldn't be. She tried her best, trying to find some way to take the sour, bitter lines and make them her own.

She wasn't even to the bottom of the page when the short man popped up out of his seat and scurried toward the stage. "Thank you, thank you!" he called. "That's all we need. You'll hear from us in a few days."

Penny thanked him, then the shadowy people in the audience, and walked offstage. She hoped her disappointment wasn't as obvious as it felt.

Sheldon was waiting outside the theater. He was standing under a skinny tree that cast even less of a shadow than he did. "How did it go?" he asked when she got close.

"Not great. Shock." She hoped this wasn't going to be one of those times he tried to comfort her. He was so terrible at it that he usually ended up hurting her feelings more than whatever had gotten her down in the first place.

He was quiet as they made their way down the block to where she'd left the car. When she pulled out her keys and beeped the locks, he turned toward her and reached out.

Penny caught his hand in hers and brought it to her cheek. Sheldon looked as serious as always, his milky-white eyes creasing at the corners and his gaze aimed somewhere over her head.

"Maybe we should talk about going—"

"Sheldon," she interrupted, "if you know what's good for you, you won't finish that sentence."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You have seen it all before, haven't you? Don't worry; you'll see it all again. That's the way this goes, the way it always goes.

We just need to wait a little while for the rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. If It Was So

> _"I know what you're thinking about,"  
>  said Tweedledum; "but it isn't so, nohow."_
> 
> _"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee,  
>  "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so,  
>  it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.  
>  That's logic."_

**i. the day after the roller coasters**

Penny stepped closer to the campfire and spread her hands. There was a chill in the air that not even the flames and forcibly borrowed sweatshirt could banish now that the sun was sinking down to the horizon. "I can't believe neither of you knows how to put up a tent."

"We know _how_ ," Leah protested. She squinted at the tent peg she was trying to drive into the hard-packed dirt and waved the mallet she was holding. "We're just not up to scratch on the practical application of that knowledge, that's all."

"And _we're_ not the ones who can't tell the difference between a campground and a hotel online," Shelly grumbled from where she was doing something with the central pole and ... where the hell did she get a level?

Penny gave one last longing look at the car bumping slowly down the track back toward the main highway. Hannah had taken one look at the clearing and whispered something that made Raj dive back into the car and lock the doors behind him. Twenty minutes of trying to coax him out had resulted in the couple heading back for town and the slim hope of a motel with an occupancy, while Penny, Leah, and Shelly carried on with the original plan. Well, the original mistake. 

"All right, let's do this," Penny said. She rolled up her too-long sleeves and ignored the clean scent of Shelly's detergent that puffed up from the fabric. "Leah, give me the mallet before you hurt yourself. Shelly, drop the level. I'll get the pegs while you guys lay out the ropes."

Shelly did drop the level, but she also looked like someone had just knocked her upside the head. She darted a look at Hannah and hissed, "Penny, don't talk about our _personal business_ —!"

The sky was completely dark before Penny stopped laughing long enough to drive the stakes into the ground.

 

**ii. the day after the parade**

All the decorations in the world weren't enough to transform the dingy walls of the youth center, but Cooper had to admit it seemed like he was the only one who noticed. The lobby was crowded with kids trying to elbow their way closer to the chaperons taking tickets. Over their heads, through the doors, he could see that the DJ had already taken up nearly a third of the room. His speakers and other assorted equipment spilled into the area Cooper had measured and marked off for the dance floor earlier that day.

"It's amazing how no one in this entire organization can follow directions," he grumbled as another over-eager teenager jostled them. He turned to shoot a glare at the group behind him. The kids who'd already taken one of his classes shrank back, but the ones he didn't recognize hardly paused for breath, let alone moving back to give them any more room. He tried to nudge Penny toward the edge of the room where the population density was lighter.

"Do you see your mom anywhere?" Penny bounced at his side, trying to rise up on her toes. She cradled her belly with one hand, using the other to steady herself on Cooper's arm. "I told her we could only help out for the first hour or s— _oof_."

She stumbled forward a few inches, throwing up her hands to keep from crashing into the kids in front of her.

Before Cooper could reach out for her—or for Tyler, the kid who'd almost knocked her over—the boy grabbed Penny's arm and held on so she wouldn't fall.

"Shi— _shoot_ , Mrs C, sorry! Are you okay? I didn't see you! Brady was shoving me, I told him to knock it off and—"

She laughed, and Cooper's stomach unknotted. Only a little, though. Even though Tyler outweighed him by a good twenty pounds of mostly muscle, most of Cooper's body was still tensing to grab the boy by the back of his neck and drag him outside for a lecture on the idiocy of roughhousing in a crowded room, let alone when there was a hugely pregnant woman nearby. Especially when Cooper's hugely pregnant _wife_ was nearby.

He kept all that to himself, though. He'd made a similar mistake not long before Georgia was born, and he swore his neck had never recovered from the week he spent on the couch.

"Just be careful," Penny was telling the boy. "I have enough trouble staying upright on my own these days." She smoothed her shirt down, pulling it tight over her skin, the round bump of her navel an island floating on a sea of swollen flesh.

Tyler caught the movement of her hand and looked down, then flushed a furious red and stammered out a few more apologies before cutting and running back to his friends. He didn't look directly at either of them the whole time.

Penny looked torn between a frown and a smirk. "Was it something I said?"

"Probably something his health teacher said," Cooper answered. "Let's go see if Mom's in the kitchen."

 

**iii. the day after the collision**

"Don't you have any boysenberry?" the disembodied voice asked.

"I am seriously not talking to you while you're invisible." Penny rubbed her forehead. "I still can't believe this is happening."

She knew without turning around that Sheldon was visible once again. Each time he did whatever it was he did with the device he wore on a cord around his neck, there was a very faint humming noise and a smell like someone was burning leaves a mile or so down the road.

When he stepped up next to her, she handed over the box of popsicles. The bright green stripes on his shirt were every bit as startling in her kitchen as they had been the day before under the fluorescent lights in the canned soup aisle.

His crimes against fashion, however, weren't anywhere near as startling as the guy who'd popped out of nowhere behind her car five minutes after she left the store. The man had shouted something in a language she didn't recognize, then shot out her rear window as she tried to drive away. The next thing she knew she was getting shoved half into the passenger seat as the car careened out of the lot, seemingly on its own except for the pressure of an invisible hand on her leg, keeping her foot steady on the gas pedal.

"Ooh, you didn't tell me there was still a pumpkin one in here!" Sheldon closed the flap of the box and put it back in the freezer before turning his attention to the waxy paper sleeve. "Boysenberry is the best popsicle flavor, obviously, but pumpkin's a close second. And on a day as hot as today, I think the squash flavor will be more refreshing than the cloying sweetness of the berry. If it even _is_ real boysenberry." He pulled the box out again and peered at the minuscule ingredients list.

Another thing Penny was still having a really hard time believing was that he was some kind of doctor and not an overgrown child who'd escaped from a mental hospital. If it hadn't been for the repeated proof that he had some kind of invisibility device and a freaking _assassin_ after him, that was. All the same, he was rapidly approaching the point when he wore down her very last nerve.

"Look, Sheldon. Okay, it's not like I want you to get... Are you _sure_ you really don't have anywhere else to go?"

It was probably the seventeenth time she'd asked him to explain what the fuck was going on, not always in so many words, but he'd stopped getting pissy about it somewhere around the time she punched him in the throat and threatened to call CNN.

"Until I determine whether the man who shot at your car in the parking lot is after me, the device, or some combination thereof, I don't know who to trust. As a complete stranger who is incapable of understanding the technology or its ramifications, you are by far the safest choice."

Penny let the insult roll right off; it was far from the first time he'd called her stupid in the last twenty hours or so. Anyway, it wasn't like it wasn't true in this case. Frankly, the less she knew about the thing around his neck, the better off she figured she'd be.

He trailed along behind her while she hauled her laptop out onto the deck. When she dropped into a chaise, he gingerly lowered himself to its twin and took delicate bites of his popsicle. His elbows and knees stuck out at awkward angles as he tried to find a way to sit comfortably on the metal and canvas chair that was at least a foot too short for his frame.

The device around his neck clunked against the arm of the chair. He made a noise like a startled kitten before carefully holding it still against his chest.

While she waited for her computer to boot up so they could check the news — she still hadn't replaced the TV Kurt had taken when he moved out — a new question occurred to her. Why the hell hadn't she thought about this before? She tried to keep the panic out of her voice. Surely he would have said something... "You're sure they can't track you when you use that thing?"

Sheldon finished sucking the last bits of his popsicle off the stick, then laid it on the canvas to the left of his knee.

"No," he said. "I'm not."

 

**iv. the day after the shift change**

"Please, don't argue with me." Hillary finished unbuttoning her blood-stained blouse and dropped it on the cracked linoleum. She took another out of her bag and shook it out. The fabric was so thin from repeated scrubbings that the light shone through it as though it were made of smoke. "From what the evac squad told Amitabh after you left last night, the line isn't going to hold much longer. You need to get out of here while you still can."

Once upon a time, Penny's laugh had been vibrant enough to fill entire rooms, to coax others into laughing along with her, even when they didn't know why. Now, it was as faded and crumbling as the world outside.

"I wouldn't make it more than a few miles inland. We both know that."

The wall shuddered under Hillary's open palm, the loud smack making them both jump. The coffee mug Penny had left on the sill rattled against the thin pane of glass.

"We _don't_ know that! You've been hiding here for three goddamn years and, God help us all, I let you."

Penny's hands shook, and she had to blink back a sudden rush of angry tears. "I haven't been _hiding_ ," she spat. She tried to say more, but the words wouldn't push past the lump in her throat. It took a huge effort to keep her hands from straying to the scars on her neck and face, and the ring felt heavier on her finger than it had ever been.

The mug rattled against the window again with the echoes of artillery fire that drifted in from the north. Hillary sighed; her shoulders drooped, and one strap of her thin, greyed camisole sagged down her arm. She'd lost more weight off a frame that had hardly any left to give. Her skin stretched tight over the bones of her shoulder and ropey muscles that grew more defined by the day, not from toning but from the fat slowly burning away around it. Was the cancer back? Penny wondered, fear shooting like lightning through her. Was that why Hillary was pushing what she'd thought impossible?

"Will you at least think about it?" Hillary asked, her voice soft again. Guilty. Almost defeated. "Jorge says he knows someone who can get you to the traveling lands."

Penny didn't want to think about it. She had given up hope a long time ago, walled up all of the cracks where it might sneak back in.

Hillary's words were splitting her wide open again, and she didn't know if she would survive it this time.

 

**v. the day after the party**

They were halfway across the parking lot when Danny twisted out of her grip.

Penny lunged for him. Her fingers just grazed the back of his shirt as he went running full-tilt toward the steps leading up into the park. She would have raced after him, but Jill was squirming against her other hand with surprising strength. Tiny fingernails pinched and scraped the skin around Penny's knuckles as her daughter tried to pry her hand free.

"Daniel Allen O'Flannery, you get back here!" she yelled after him. "Jilly, _stop_ it."

The answering whine was familiar even if some of the words weren't. "But, _Mommy_ , it's the Weather Man! From the party!"

Startled, Penny looked up, and wanted to sink down into the parking lot until the pavement swallowed her whole. At the bottom of the steps, frozen as if in terror of the six-year-old boy barrelling toward him, was the tall man her children had accosted the night before. The man with the blue eyes she imagined that she could feel on her back every time she turned away.

The one who had stolen into her dreams later that night, the first since Kevin's captain stood in her living room, turning his black cap in his hands, the acrid smell of smoke clinging to his skin and hair.

Penny closed her eyes and swallowed a swear word that would have earned her a smack on the bottom from her puritanical daughter.

"Mommy, come _on_ ," Jill pleaded. She was pulling so hard against Penny's grip that her whole body pitched forward, like a rocket straining to blast off from the pad. "I want to talk to the Weather Man! He said he knowed why the bees like the apple trees better but Danny made me forget to ask him to 'splain it 'cause he kept talking about cars and _then_ you made me ...."

With a sigh, Penny let herself be dragged forward. "He _knows_ why, Jill," she corrected, "and please stop calling him the Weather Man. His name is Dr Cooper."

Jill stopped pulling for a fraction of a second, her eyes wide and mouth slack and round. "A _doctor_ ," she breathed in wonder before turning back into a tiny girl-shaped tugboat sweeping them both across the asphalt.

 

**vi. the day after more than one ending**

If she squinted, Main Street looked exactly the same as it did the day she left town. With the windows down, her hair in her face, Penny could pretend for a second that this was Kurt's Chevy and they were heading for guaranteed fame and fortune and streets paved with gold. The shifter would be smooth under her hand as he moaned in the passenger seat about his killer hangover from their raucous going-away party.

But Davis Drug was now a CVS, and the café where she'd worked all through high school had been boarded up for a year. And instead of carrying the football team and boosters to an away game, the town had rolled out the school buses to ferry people from the church to the cemetery and back.

Penny lifted her foot off the accelerator and rolled through the stoplight. As they passed through the intersection, Tommy Peters stopped waving the procession through and tipped his hat to her instead.

"I can't believe _Tommy Peters_ is a freaking deputy," she said aloud. "Seriously, biggest pothead _ever_."

Sheldon turned in his seat to regard the cop shrinking into the distance behind them. "Maybe he still is."

 _That's not the point_ she wanted to tell him, but she didn't know what the point was, exactly. She was dry-eyed and still full from breakfast, and she was driving her mother's truck through a town she thought she'd left behind forever. Her hands were steady, and she took each turn neat and slow, and she could see the back of her aunts' heads in the car ahead.

Penny concentrated on them, on the thick white line of Anna's part, and the tidy bun at the nape of Betsy's neck. She couldn't make herself look any farther forward than that, relying on Sheldon to tell her with slight noises and intakes of breath when it was time to take the turns she would rather not take.

Small pebbles pinged up into the undercarriage of the truck when they pulled into the small gravel parking lot just outside the gates. Ahead she caught a glimpse of the long, black body of the hearse that carried her parents as it disappeared down the service track that led deeper into the grounds. Behind her, in the mirror, the cheery yellow buses rumbled to a stop along the road.

There was a vague memory in her head of someone explaining that the buses couldn't park in the lot; that people would have to pick their way across the grass and stones, church shoes and all. Too much rain or not enough, she wasn't listening, not really. She was tracing the knuckles of her left hand, feeling the long-faded scars from helping her dad rebuild a tractor engine, a thresher, the old well pump.

"When your dad—" she started to say as she put the truck in park. "Were there a lot of people? Like this?"

Sheldon looked out the window again, at the people tramping across the grass with skirts and pant legs held high. "No," he said. "Not this many."

She hadn't cried in days, not since Sheldon took the phone out of her hand and shut himself in his office to make arrangements. But now, as she watched him looking out at the greyness that surrounded them, cold and bleak like it had been ripped out of her brain and left to die, Penny felt tears crowding into her throat, thick and hot.

 

**vii. the day after the accidental date**

The giant outer space spider creature was dead in a parking lot, its hairy legs cocked toward the sky and yellow tape strung up all around the corpse.

The blandly hunky country sheriff was threatening the equally blandly hunky visiting scientist with a night in jail when the knocking started. Penny muted the TV on her way to answer the door. It had been another long and annoying shift at the shop, but one she'd weathered admirably, considering...

Well, considering she'd been swallowing laughter like a lunatic all day and walking with a decided bounce in her step, it was hardly surprising she'd made it through the day without braining anyone.

As she looked through the peephole to see her new neighbor, Sheldon, with his hand raised to knock again, she felt another grin lift its way onto her face. This time she didn't do anything to stop it.

"Hi!" she chirped as soon as the door was open enough for her to meet his eyes.

Sheldon started to say something, then apparently thought better of it and smiled instead. It didn't sit quite right on his face, one side of his mouth lifting more than the other, but she thought it probably matched her own idiot expression pretty well.

"I realize that this may be awkward given that we've only known each other for a sum total of seven hours, when you add our impromptu outing yesterday evening to the various times our paths have crossed in the lobby, elevator, stairwells, and parking garage in the past few days...."

"Geez, and here I thought you didn't know I existed," Penny teased. For the first time in a long time, she wanted to cringe as the words slipped out. She'd meant to say something friendly, maybe tell him to take a breath, but what came out instead— she didn't realize until that moment that she had been counting too.

"I- I, that is—" He kind of peered down at her. "You're being sarcastic, aren't you?"

That gave her pause. "You know, I actually don't think I am."

"Damn. Well, we can discuss that later. Right now I am compelled to infringe on our nascent association to ask for sanctuary."

"Huh?"

"My mother wants me to invite you over for dinner. She's making nine-bean chili, and my father—"

Penny threw up her hands to stop him. "Say no more. I've got a dad of my own. Come on in, I'm just watching something terrible on TV. You want a beer?"

He looked around the apartment as he came in, at the piles of clothes on the armchair and couch, the socks and magazines strewn all over the coffee table, the pile of recyclables teetering next to the kitchen island. Penny tried not to let his scrutiny bother her.

After a few seconds, Sheldon shook himself and repeated, "...a beer. Yes, I think I will." He nodded, looking satisfied.

"How long is your family in town?" Penny asked as she grabbed the bottles and popped the tops. "Oh, they don't live with you, do they? It's just that I've never seen them here before. Not that I've been spying on you or anything! I mean, you just moved in! How would I know what's up with you? Or your family?"

She thrust a bottle in his hand and took a long drink from her own, mostly to stop the embarrassing flow of words before she told him she'd checked out his medicine cabinet the night before, or that his grandma had patted her arm and complimented her hips. Or that one of his uncles had offered to take her on a turkey shoot when she and Sheldon came to visit, as though no one had given him the memo that she was actually a total stranger kidnapped from the hallway.

Sheldon shuddered. "Good lord, no. My brother got married last week, and they stayed to help me move into the building. Most of them are heading back to Houston tomorrow."

"That's nice," she said, then realized how that sounded and stuttered a correction. "No! I mean, it's nice that they helped you move! I mean, yeah, it'll be nice _for you_ , probably, to have your apartment to yourself—"

"I wouldn't say that, exactly."

Penny had been on the receiving end of her fair share of smoldering looks, and as Sheldon raised the beer bottle to his lips.... Yep. That was definitely one of them.

 

**viii. the day after the blockbuster**

"What does that even mean?" Penny muttered at her textbook. She could barely balance a checkbook, let alone wade through all of this. What the hell had possessed her to sign up for a finance class in the first place?

At her elbow, her cell phone started buzzing, a blurry picture of Sheldon's sleeping face lighting up in the display.

Oh, right, _that_ was who had talked her into it.

"Sheldon, so help me God, if you're calling to bitch at me for letting Gilda touch your popcorn yesterday, I am going to strangle you."

He sucked in a scandalized breath. "She touched my popcorn?!"

Penny winced. "What? No! That's not why you're calling?"

"No, I was calling to tell you that Leonard hasn't come home yet, so I assume Gilda's plan worked and they are still engaged in acrobatic feats of—"

The book slammed shut with a crack. All this studying in the middle of the day was going to ruin her eyesight, anyway. Or something. "You're home alone?"

"That is the implication one should take away from 'Leonard hasn't come home yet'."

She did a quick breath check and dug through her purse for a mint. "Unlock the door," she commanded. "I'll be there in thirty seconds."

Through the phone Penny heard the telltale squeak of his bedroom door, then the echo of his footsteps through the living room. She tossed aside a stack of unopened mail, coming up with her spare keys and the still-sealed toothbrush she'd been meaning to leave in his bathroom for weeks.

"You just left an hour ago! I thought you had an exam to study for?"

Penny yanked her door open to find Sheldon watching her from the other side of the hall. She pressed random buttons on her phone to disconnect the call and threw it over her shoulder, not caring where it landed. "Screw the exam."

"You can't really afford to neglect your education any longer, but I was hoping you'd say that," Sheldon said into the phone he still had pressed to his ear. "Remind me to encourage Gilda to wear miniskirts more often."

 

**ix. the day after the game**

Sheldon engaged the brakes on his chair, snapped the cloth napkin open and settled it on his lap. He'd only just started to inspect the silverware when the waitress bounded over with his soda.

"Two days in a row? If I didn't know better, I'd say this was my lucky day."

He looked up in time to catch her wink, but her smile faded a little when he didn't otherwise react. It gave him an odd sinking feeling to see her bright expression dim so he forced an answering smile.

Equilibrium apparently restored, she waved the laminated menu. "Wanna take a look today or should I just put your usual order in?"

"The usual. And this fork has spots."

She reached for the utensil he held out, and he was suddenly reminded that her right arm was encased in a cast all the way up to her elbow. He waited until she came back with a clean roll of silverware to ask, "What happened? I'm sorry. I should have asked yesterday."

"Oh, it's nothing, just a stupid accident. I was coming down the escalator at the mall and my sandal got stuck in the step thingy. The doctor said it was just a sprain, so I'm totally okay to keep working!"

None of Sheldon's degrees or titles were in medicine, but he'd certainly had enough experience with them in the past few years to know that sprains didn't usually require full casts. But the waitress' lips tightened the longer he looked, so he busied himself with the salt and pepper and sweetener packets, making sure they were lined up correctly with the edges of the table.

"I'll just have the usual," Sheldon repeated, hoping she would take the hint and leave. He was embarrassed by how much he wanted to pry, to make sure the injury wasn't severe, that she wasn't just trying to keep a job that was beneath even her.

"Sure thing, sweetie," she said. Her usual sunny demeanor returned, the smile audible in her voice. "I actually put it in as soon as I saw you come in. One barbecue bacon burger coming right up."

He wasn't sure when her chatter had become more comfort than annoyance, but there was no denying that the food wasn't what drew him back to this restaurant day after day. It was disconcerting, this interest he had in her. Not just in her well-being, but in her. He wanted to know why she was at the mall, why she worked her, why she always looked happy to see him... It had been years since he'd had any interest in anything outside of himself. Why now?

Why her? 

 

**x. the day after the sunscreen**

"I still smell coconut," Lee complained.

He leaned in toward Penny and took a loud sniff of her hair. The cab driver lifted the last of their luggage out of the trunk and rolled his eyes.

"You're imagining things, Lee." Katie pushed on the bridge of her oversize sunglasses and went back to rummaging through her purse. "Jesus Christ, if I left my keys in that hotel room, I'm going to kill someone."

After a week of enforced cohabitation with her two best, and bitchiest, friends, Penny wasn't touching that with a ten-foot pole. The last time she'd tried to call Katie on her drama queen tendencies, she wound up sleeping on the patio when Katie locked her out of the room.

Instead, she settled for the lesser — and far more satisfying — evil of picking at Lee.

"If you smell coconut it's probably because you're still drunk on daiquiris. All I smell is exhaust." She leaned in and gave him a significant look, then stage-whispered, "And B.O."

The driver slammed the trunk lid, making them all jump. He got into his cab without another word.

Looking at the bags still piled up between the vehicles, Lee raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. "I sincerely hope y'all don't think I'm picking those up."

Katie gave up trying to crawl in her purse long enough to repeat, " _Y'all_?", before shrieking with laughter.

"For the last time, there is nothing wrong with the way I talk!"

Penny ignored them both and started hauling their bags off the road and up onto the sidewalk. Lee and Katie followed, still arguing, but only after she finished moving the last bag. She sat on the biggest suitcase and flapped the front of her tank top, trying to get a tiny breeze going in the sticky, sweltering heat. Or at least to keep enough air moving so she wouldn't smell quite so much like roadkill by the time they got home.

Next time, she swore as she prayed for a skycap who would probably never show, next time _she_ was picking where they went for spring break.

 

**xi. the day after the last straw**

Penny drove west out of Colorado, with some notion of seeing the ocean, but doubled-back before too long and went south instead. She slept in her car for a few hours at a time, whenever she found a parking lot that seemed busy enough. She couldn't believe she had been so stupid as to use her own name that night. She'd remembered about the credit cards, how they could be tracked, and threw them out the window a few miles from home. Her cell phone followed, three hours in the opposite direction. In St Joseph she had used her sister's driver's license for the credit check and traded down her car for one that smelled like oil all the time, even when the engine was cold. 

Now she went south, and then east, then north and west, huge looping circles around the desert while she tried to figure out what to do next. Even if there was someone she could go to for help, every single name and number she'd never bothered to memorize is trapped in a hunk of plastic somewhere in Iowa.

There were a few minutes, when the moon was high overhead and animals called to each other in the darkness, when Penny almost turned the car to head home.

In the end, she stood by the hood of the car and tossed a nickel she found wedged in the back of the ashtray. They would be looking for her by then, turning her apartment upside-down, harassing her family, her neighbors, coworkers. She needed to disappear, for good. For real. No more driving aimlessly around hoping for salvation. She needed to go to ground.

She needed to be someone new.

The coin told her to go east, so she turned to the west instead. East was rainy and wet, Ivy Leagues and pinstriped suits. East was cold cities and ruthless business. But West? West was golden sunshine and dreams coming true.

Penny couldn't go home. She thought of how the gun had kicked in her hands, the familiar burn of muscle as she struggled to hold it steady. How the hole that blossomed in his chest was not a neat little circle, not at all, not like in the movies. How he didn't drop to the floor but came after her instead, his hands hard and crushing, like always, and the floor was slick with his blood and hers. How she fell to her knees in it before his body finally, _finally_ , went down on one knee, then face-first to the floor.

It took an hour over the dry sink in the basement to scrape it all off her hands. The clothes smelled terrible when she burned them, and she gagged, over and over again, crying through it all and furious with herself for it.

The coin told her to go east, so she went west. She went west to the ocean, and then the coin told her to go south, then east, and the coin said to turn left, and left again, and right, and the gas light came on as she passed a not-too-shabby brick building with a for-rent sign in front.

Two mismatched men stepped out of the front doors, arguing with each other about aliens and dim sum and whose turn it was to do something she didn't catch as they passed.

It was Katie who got into the car in Omaha, who cried without stopping as she drove hours and hours out of her way. It was Katie who disappeared on the road somewhere near Denver, and Katie whose name and face she would have to forget.

It was Penny who stepped onto the sidewalk in Pasadena.

 

**xii. the day after the trial run**

Sheldon paused the DVD. "Would you like me to draw a warm bath for you?"

"What the hell?"

"It's what my mom used to do whenever Missy got dumped."

Leonard glared. "That's not helping, Sheldon!"

"Oh." He took a moment to consider why. "I thought after the two hours you spent last night cataloguing all of Stephanie's flaws with Louie-slash-Louise that it was once again acceptable to reference your breakup directly. I apologize."

The apartment was so quiet he could hear the hum of the DVD player all the way across the room. It seemed Leonard wasn't even breathing.

"You can borrow Mr Quackers, if you think that would help."

" _Oh_ , my _God_ ," Leonard whispered as he rubbed his temples.

 

**xiii. the day after only one ending**

If life were a movie, the Army would swoop in as Penny struggled bravely to keep breathing, her skin chalk-pale and damp. The coughs would wrack her body, but delicately, as if she were too frail to even muss her hair, let alone spit up blood and mucus. They would bundle her out to waiting trucks; Sheldon, too, if he were still breathing, and Leslie and Raj, too, if their chemistry had sequel potential.

If life had a script, there would be a miracle cure. Leonard would burst through the door, hale and whole and all but vibrating with purpose. He would hold a vial, or a syringe, or even a single pill pinched between two fingers, ready for the hero shot, the close-up, the kiss with the heroine for whom he'd risked life and limb.

If life came from a studio, if life went the way someone decided it should, instead of whatever direction it took by chance—

If life was all written, with a beginning, a middle, and an end determined by an individual or a committee or marketing data, Penny would be flying down a country road with the wind in her hair, the radio cranked up, Leonard's hand on her thigh. The sun would shine and the trees would dance, the birds would sing in the trees, and if life were a movie, Penny would be making out with Leonard before the credits started to roll.

If life were a movie, this wouldn't be the end.

Not yet.

 

**xiv. the day after the team**

"Are you sure we shouldn't help?" Raj asked again. "There seem to be more coming in."

All six of their heads swiveled toward the entrance doors, where a veritable wave of black-suited, over-muscled goons kept flooding into the restaurant. The hostess and the floor manager shrieked again and dove behind the salad bar. A mountain of plates crashed down around them, followed by one of the original goons. He moaned once and went silent, his whole body limp.

"I think she's doing fine on her own," Sheldon said. He went on eating while everyone else at the table flinched and cringed and, though Howard would deny it later, whimpered.

"Any of you ever work with Walker over at the agency?" Leslie asked. "Looks a little bit like Combat Barbie there? Last I saw her was at a Weinerlicious."

"With the pigtails?" Kripke squinted across the dining room to where Penny was whipping off her yellow vest and using it to bring down another two bruisers. "You see a wesemblence?"

"Maybe it's just the uniform."

Leonard pushed up his glasses and cleared his throat. "I'm with Raj, maybe someone should help her. I mean, eight against one isn't great odds, even for Penny."

He looked at Sheldon, who sighed.

"Fine," he huffed and put down his burger. "And which one of you will be the one to tell her _why_ we thought she couldn't take care of herself?"

No one would meet his eyes.

"I'll expect a forfeit from each of you," he warned as he stood.

 

**xv. the day after the audition**

On the drive home from the audition, Sheldon sat with his face tilted toward his open window. At a stoplight a car pulled up beside them, front and back seats overflowing with high school kids. One of them looked over and saw Sheldon's wide, milky eyes, and elbowed another. They made faces, shouted and laughed and pointed when he didn't react.

He never kept his eyes closed when he could help it. Refused to wear dark glasses. Considered an eyepatch for a day or two, but couldn't decide whether it should be on his right or his left.

Penny often wondered if there was any reason beyond sheer pigheadedness. Was he able to see impressions of light or color where he once saw everything? Or did his brain give him faint shadows to fill in what it knew must still be out there? Was it pitch-black inside his head, the blindness robbing him of all he'd ever seen?

But theirs wasn't a relationship that would let her ask these questions. Sheldon only let her in so far, and not one inch beyond.

When she woke the next morning, he was already up and gone. Since his position at the university dissolved amid the allegations and lawsuits, he had been acting as Stuart's assistant, on and off. Usually off. Even Stuart didn't have the patience to put up with the black moods that blew up when Sheldon's frustration met his new limitations head-on. Combined with the headaches that knocked him out of commission for almost a full week every month, it was no wonder Raj was his only option.

She checked the cupboards and fridge and opted to skip breakfast. Penny hadn't had much of an appetite lately, but she was getting better at stretching their meager groceries from one week to the next. Her shifts at the restaurant were still bringing in a lot of money — more, even, once she got over her distaste for flirting with everyone that was seated in her section. Before, it had seemed so tacky to pretend like that, but the closer they skated to losing the apartment, the friendlier she got.

 _Maybe we should talk about going—_ , he'd started to say.

Penny didn't want to admit it—never, ever wanted to admit it— but it was rapidly becoming the only choice they had left. She knew that if it hadn't been for her, if she hadn't been there to hold him back, Sheldon would already be gone, blindness be damned. The calls still came, she knew, even though he never mentioned them. And every once in a while she would turn on the laptop and find his screen-reader still open, with the browser history full of news stories about things with names she'd never be able to pronounce, like autunite and uranophane.

When he came home that night, his cane _tip-tip-tapping_ through the living room while she watched from the kitchen, Penny studied him for the first time in what felt like ages. The lines around his mouth and eyes were getting deeper, and the creases in his forehead never fully smoothed out anymore. He still walked hunched over a little, like he was just starting to bend to talk to someone. His shoulders rounded forward, one lower than the other as he kept the tip of his cane dancing just above the floor.

"A picture would last longer," Sheldon said.

He pulled off his ugly windbreaker and carefully laid it over the back of his dusty desk chair. Penny stayed where she was, waited for him to settle onto the stool in front of her, then guided his hands to the plate of toast and mug of coffee she had ready for him. He smiled, faint but warm.

With a shock Penny noticed just how thin he was. His shirts hung from his shoulders, barely skimming the edges of his chest and stomach. His wristbones stood out sharply, the veins in his hands and forearms more noticeable than ever.

Her breathing must have changed, because he swallowed and tilted his head toward her.

"Sheldon," she said, her voice cracking a little, "I think we _should_ talk about going."


	3. If I'm Not The Same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Supposed to be an AMNESTY FIC in a shameless copying of Damalur but idk, somehow I finished them instead. These are all one-year-later continuations of the AUs in the first two chapters, from long-forgotten picture prompts at [**sheldon_penny**](http://sheldon-penny.livejournal.com/). As done as they'll ever get, I guess. _iii_ from all three collections obviously got re-used in [Get Rid of Me If You Try](http://ishieland.livejournal.com/35299.html)!

 

 

 

> _Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot,  
>  she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: "Dear,  
>  dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things  
>  went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the  
>  night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning?  
>  I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm  
>  not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I?  
>  Ah, _ that's _the great puzzle!"_  
> 

 

 

 

**i. a year after the roller coasters**

"Fore!"

Penny cringed as Hannah took another choppy swing at the ball. A divot of turf flew up in the air, then came to rest next to a number of similar lumps of grass and dirt.

"Well, shoot." Hannah propped her hands on her hips and surveyed the evidence of her terrible swing. "I think this club is too long for me or something."

Shelly un- and re-fastened the velcro straps on her gloves for at least the twentieth time. "I'd put my money on your inability to calculate the proper arc needed to make contact at the bottom of your swing."

Hannah's face screwed up. "I know how to calculate that, okay? I am an engineer, for God's sake."

"Barely," Shelly sniffed.

Penny threw herself between them before they could start another of their embarrassingly stereotypical fights — honestly, she'd never known a single other girl in the entire world who pulled as much hair as Shelly Leigh Cooper, unless it was Hannah Wolowitz.

"Okay," she said, one hand grabbing Shelly's and squeezing while the other waved vaguely toward the left of the green. "Hannah, why don't you take a few practice swings over there and I'll go ahead and take my turn now."

"You can't—"

"I can, and I'm going to," she interrupted. "We'll follow all the rules once the tournament starts, but for now we'll just take it easy, okay? It's not life or death."

Shelly's hand tightened under hers. Penny wouldn't swear to it but it almost looked like her eyes were rolling, showing the whites like a horse about to bolt. "Not life or death? You don't know that! We can't take it _easy_! It's a pro-am tournament, Penny. _I'm going to have to face Wil Wheaton_."

 

 

**ii. a year after the parade**

The sheets were scratchy, smelled more of dust than fabric softener, and under any other circumstances would have sent Penny screaming for the nearest laundry room. After nine hours in the car with a restless six year old, a squalling ten month old, and a whiny thirty year old husband, though, she snuggled deeper into the thin mattress with something like a sigh of pleasure. They were supposed to push on for another hour or two before stopping, but she was ready to kick her entire family out on the side of the road and head for Mexico. They had great margaritas at the tourist traps just over the border, she'd heard.

"I don't even want to hear about getting back on the road until at least ten tomorrow," she warned Cooper.

"It's barely six o'clock. What are we supposed to do for sixteen hours in the middle of nowhere?"

As heavenly as it felt to finally be resting on something other than her aching ass, the pressure in her boobs was starting to get painful. It was almost time to feed the baby but she was sleeping quietly for the first time in hours. Unlike her sister, blessed baby that Georgia had been when viewed in the giant blind spot of hindsight, riding in the car was an affront to Leia's very being, and no amount of dollies or binkies or mashed bananas could soothe her.

Penny carefully lifted her head to check on her. It wasn't that she believed Leia could read her mind, but sometimes Penny wondered if she got a sadistic, un-baby-like pleasure from doing exactly what Penny was hoping she wouldn't. Leia was still sleeping though, tucked in the portable crib Cooper's stepdad had made for them before Georgia made her first appearance.

And, oh bless, the breast pump bag was already waiting for her on top of the in-room fridge.

She turned over, gingerly, to find Cooper unpacking their overnight bag on the other bed. Penny reached out and tugged at the hem of his plaid shorts. "Why don't you take Georgia down to see what that giant head was? Could be some kind of dinosaur park or something. Maybe there's a museum. You can pick up McDonald's on the way back."

Georgia looked away from the TV with a huge grin and rolled back on the bed, kicking her legs in the air. "Yay!" she cheered quietly, throwing her hands up like she was waving at the ceiling. Penny tried to pretend it was the museum that got that reaction and not the Golden Arches.

"Not like to be worth the price of admission, I bet," Cooper complained.

He turned to put something on the dresser between the beds. Penny curved her hand around the back of his knee.

"Make it worth your while," she offered with an exaggerated wink.

"You're going to drive some tomorrow?" He paused, considered. "No, you're going to offer to drive some tomorrow, then make me take over again when Leia throws her binky on the floor for the fifth time."

"See?" She pinched him, just a little. "I knew one of you would figure out how to read my mind sooner or later."

 

 

**iii. a year after the collision**

For a few minutes every morning — between the shower that snapped her out of a sleep-fogged daze and stepping out of the bathroom fully dressed for the day — Penny got to look in the mirror and not be surprised by the eyes that looked back. But then she'd have to take that last step of her morning routine and pop in the colored contacts that finished her transformation from Starving Actress (On the Run) to Boring Entry-Level Office Drone (Faking It, and Badly).

This month it was blue eyes. Mousy brown hair. Maybe a little too much time between waxings, if the state of her eyebrows and upper lip were anything to go by.

 _Bang, bang, bang_ went the knuckles on the door, right on time.

"Are you ready to go? You need to leave in precisely two minutes in order to get to work by the start of your workday."

"Are you visible yet?" Penny called back. She already knew the answer. It had been almost six weeks since she last heard that hum. Since she felt it raise the hairs on the back of her neck and smelled autumn in the middle of a Florida spring.

They'd found ways around it, mostly, but Penny missed being able to look him in the eye. To watch the way his face changed when she riled him up, or the slight flush that rose up through his neck and face when she forgot for a few hours what a terrible idea it was to get involved with the crazy man who'd ruined her life. She wondered if it was time to make some sort of ultimatum, if reminding him of all the ways _visible_ Sheldon was useful to her would be enough to kick his brain in gear to fix whatever had fritzed out inside the device.

"One minute, forty-five seconds," he said instead of answering. The door creaked open an inch or two, his yellow-gloved fingers coming around the edge like some kind of horror movie villain.

Or Brad Pitt-in- _Fight Club_ , her mind unhelpfully supplied. Wrenching the door open, a panting, half-dressed Penny in the room behind him, Sheldon barking out monosyllabic answers to annoying questions....

Penny swept her hair up in a ponytail, trying to cool down the sudden rush of heat that flooded through her.

Six weeks was an _awfully_ goddamn long time.

 

 

**iv. a year after the shift change**

"Macaroni and cheese."

Penny wrinkled her nose and tossed another cord of wood on the fire. "Seriously? Homemade or Kraft?"

"Shit, girl, are you kidding? I would eat that damn cheese powder _dry_ at this point." Sherry finished cranking the can opener and poured the beans into the cast-iron pot. "What about you? You gotta be prepared in case we wander into civilization tomorrow, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Um," Penny scratched her chin while she pretended to think.

They'd played the same game every night for as long as she could remember, since she and Sherry had said goodbye to Jorge at the crossroads. But while Sherry's answer changed every day, depending on her mood or the brightness of the moon through the clouds or whatever, Penny cycled through the same list over and over again. In the months they'd been moving through the traveling lands, Penny had honed it down until it was worn smooth in her mind, razor-thin and translucent; the list, like shells too impossibly delicate to survive the journey to a sandy beach, breaking up under the waves and waiting to slice through the tender skin of some tourist's foot.

"I'll start with an appletini," she said. Just the syllables were enough to taste it on her lips and tongue. Tart and sweet and wet. The alcohol that always seemed just a little oily. That burst of sourness on the roof of her mouth.

Tomorrow night, she would remember fajitas. The tortilla, soft and supple; vegetables still sizzling on the plate, bitter char marks criss-crossing the crisp julienned peppers and onions. The vinegary scent of salsa under her nose as she polished off the chip basket, laughing at her appetite, chile seeds burning holes in her tongue.

"And there'd better be a big ol' hunk of Granny Smith floating in that sucker, too," she added, just to hear Sherry's silvery laugh floating up alongside the smoke into the sky.

 

 

**v. a year after the party**

"Saguaro," he said again, with extra emphasis on the _wɑroʊ_ since she hadn't yet said it right.

"Sog-arrow," Jill repeated, as stubborn in her mispronunciation as she was when forced to apologize to her brother. She pointed at the next page. "What's that?"

"That's a burrowing owl," Sheldon read from the caption under the picture.

She slapped a hand to her face and laughed, open-mouthed and loud. "He looks funny! Like Miz Barnett."

While they'd been turning pages in the book, Jill had slowly risen to her knees in her chair. She plopped back down again when Sheldon pressed on the top of her head before she cracked it against his chin.

"What's funny about the way _Mrs_ Barnett looks?" He'd only met the woman once, when the babysitter cancelled with no notice. Penny, trapped at work, had called and all but begged him to pick the kids up from school.

"Her legs are skinnier than all the rest of her. Like a chicken," Jill said. She sounded bored with the very digression she'd introduced to the conversation. Nothing new there; her brain whizzed from one idea to the next at a rate that would have exhausted Sheldon if he weren't intimately familiar with the behavior himself.

At the rate they were going tonight, though, it didn't seem likely the girl would ever focus enough to learn how to read for herself. Smart as the dickens, but without a lick of sense in her whole body, as his mom would, and did, say.

Sheldon turned to the next page, and Jill stopped him with a tiny hand on his wrist. He dutifully turned back to the owl picture and sat back to wait for her next question.

"How does it burrow in the rocks?"

He leaned forward and skimmed the page. The photo showed an owl standing on a grassy rise, soft brown dirt under its talons. But in the paragraph just above it was a sentence about how the birds took advantage of existing structures when the ground was too hard to dig their own.

"I don't know," he hedged, tapping her on the head again when she started to pop out of her seat like a jack-in-the-box. "What do you think?"

Her progress was so frustratingly slow that he wondered if she weren't playing dumb, to still be unable to read so she could stretch out the lessons. He couldn't pretend that he hadn't noticed the way both children kept pushing him in their mother's path. But when he'd said as much, Penny had flushed a soft red and shot the idea down.

Sheldon ignored the twinge of regret the memory of her denial still dredged up.

Jill hummed, drummed a finger against her lips the way her mother did right before she changed the subject. "I bet they steal other people's houses!"

"Jilly!" he gasped in mock disapproval. He let his usual accent lapse into the one he still carried from childhood, the one she and Danny had begged to hear over and over and over again after spending an afternoon glued to a marathon of cheesy old westerns. "You can't just accuse innocent owls of house thievin'."

"But it's right th—" Her eyes went wide, wispy blonde eyebrows disappearing under her bangs as she caught herself about to give away the whole game. She snatched her hand back from where she'd been about to point out the relevant passage in the book.

Before Sheldon could respond, Jill hopped down out of her chair and grabbed his hand. She tugged with all her might, trying to drag him along behind her. "I bet Mommy knows. C'mon!"

Mommy probably didn't have any idea there even was such a thing as a burrowing owl, but Sheldon let himself be tugged in her direction anyway.

 

 

**vi. a year after more than one ending**

She finished paying out on the hands at the table and pulled the cards across the felt. The big-bellied woman in the wolf shirt stood, juggling her chips and drink, and thanked her in a voice that probably carried a good two or three tables away.

"Enjoy the rest of your stay, ma'am!" Penny reached out to collect the two chip tip she'd left, and looked up with a smile.

When the woman moved away from the table, parting the crowd around her as she made her way to the bar, Penny froze. Ten seconds later, and she would never have known he was there.

It was Sheldon, standing near the roulette tables, his elbows tucked close against his side as he looked around.

Penny smiled again, and raised her hand to wave and shout his name. Floor rules be damned, _personal_ rules be damned, she hadn't seen him in months, not since the day she told him it was kinder to let themselves go. A sweet curl of joy rose in her chest. Had he come looking for her?

But before she could get his attention, a woman stepped up next to him and wrapped her hand around his skinny bicep. He ducked his head toward her, her frizzy brown hair a perfect complement for his short, smooth hair.

She lost track of them after that, deliberately. Kept her attention trained on her table until someone came to relieve her. She clapped out and signed over her drawer, nodded along with the floorman's end of shift instructions, nodded up at the security camera over the employee exit; she was hyperaware of everything around her but weirdly detached from it, like she was on autopilot the whole time, or watching herself in a dream.

As she ripped off her bowtie and vest and flung them in her locker, she thought maybe it was time she finished running, all the way back to the big empty house still waiting for her outside Omaha.

 

 

**vii. a year after the accidental date**

"Tell you what, I never thought I'd see the day Sheldon actually brought a girl home, let alone one who fits in as good as you."

Penny shifted the giant frozen turkey on her lap. Even wrapped in plastic and paper bags, it was dripping condensation (she hoped) all over her. She smiled at Uncle Badger, as he insisted she call him, or tried to, anyway. He was a little too much like her own uncles for it to be totally unweird. She kept waiting for her aunt Kelly to start screeching from the jumpseat.

"Sorry," she said, feeling her face start to pull into a frown. "He's never brought a girl home before?"

Badger pulled the unlit cigar out of his mouth and guffawed. If he hadn't been trying to steer and shift at the same time, Penny would have bet good money he would have slapped his knee and punched her shoulder, too.

No, wait, red light. She braced herself against the door as his hand came up to her shoulder.

"That's a good one," he said between chuckles. "Shelly bringing a girl home. No, Pen, you're the first. And damn glad I am, too, lots of girls out there who wouldn't want to spend an afternoon at a turkey shoot with an old goat like me."

It wasn't exactly her idea of a great afternoon either, but Badger was really hard to say no to once he got an idea in his head. And for some reason he'd kept the idea in his head ever since he met her in Pasadena, the night his family had kidnapped her and tried to force-feed her barbecue.

Plus, hello, turkey shoot with prizes? She had plans for this week that didn't involve going with anyone _or_ their mom to pick out their own poultry from a pen.

The stoplight changed and Badger peeled out. Penny braced the turkey against the dash.

"You guys stick around next weekend, you and me'll go down to the bay and do some fishin'. Hell, we'll even take Sheldon!"

 

 

**viii. a year after the blockbuster**

When the job offer finally came, there was nothing for Gilda to say but yes. It made sense, a total feather in her cap and bragging rights besides.

"So, that's it?" Penny said, swallowing down her disappointment. "You're going?"

"Of course I am. What's left for me here?"

 _Me_ , Penny wanted to say. Wanted to scream. _Stay here with me._ For _me._

But it wouldn't get her any farther with Gilda than it ever had with Sheldon.

Someday, Penny promised herself, she was going to fall in love with someone who would look up from their work long enough to notice.

 

 

**ix. a year after the game**

The chair felt way more comfortable than Penny thought it had any right to be. A lawyer's office wasn't a place where people were supposed to be comfortable, was it? Well, maybe it was when the office was as fancy as this one. She doubted anyone here had ever had to clean puke out of a carpet or stand next to a client dying slowly from infected track marks, which was all she'd ever known when it came to lawyers.

"Do you understand, ma'am?"

"Oh, sure," she said, even though she didn't. He'd used a lot of words she didn't know. Lots and lots, in fact. _Probate_ sounded dirty but wasn't, apparently. Or else somebody was in for a rude surprise, and for once it wasn't her.

The lawyer smiled and handed her a pen. "Just sign at the blue flags and initial the yellow."

As she flipped each page, he slid them across the desk and made two stacks.

"So, any plans? I know you weren't expecting this, but I bet you've got some ideas."

He sounded as excited for her windfall as she knew she should feel, but when she tried to play along, all she could think of was the doctor in his metal chair. If it weren't for the documents she'd just pretended to understand, she wouldn't even remember his name, let alone his face beyond a blur of sallow skin and thinning hair. Her only clear memory was of the barbecue bacon burger, well-done, and a Coke with two cherries.

That was all she had left, the rest crowded out by the grind of life and death between his last visit to Mac's and now.

 

 

**x. a year after the sunscreen**

The vacation she picked, Penny was proud to say, was everything their trip the year before wasn't. A week at cozy resort in Arizona, surrounded by mountains that turned purple when the sun set. Purification cleanses and mud baths, and the hot waiter in the black polo shirt hanging on their every word at the nightly cocktail hour. It was tranquil and peaceful and relaxing.

And boring as _fuck_.

"It's Spring Break," Katie whined, flopping face-first onto her pool chaise. "Why aren't we drunk in Acapulco or something? Anything. _Jesus_."

Lee snorted. "Thanks, but I've had enough holding your hair while you puke on the side of a dirt road for one lifetime."

Penny listened with half an ear, much too busy trying to let go of her surroundings and give herself over to nature to try to mediate another round of the grudge match heading into its third decade

"Oh, for God's sake, you need to get laid."

"Says you."

"Shut _up_. Who? Waiter Walter?"

Penny cracked an eye open to see Lee cross his arms and smirk.

Katie turned on her back and threw an arm over her eyes. "I hate you."

 

 

**xi. a year after the last straw**

Penny loves Facebook.

In real life, she has two friends. Sure, there are people she's on good terms with at work. There are the dates she goes on to look normal, like she doesn't come home afterward and cry in the shower until she feels hollowed out. She's doing the best job she possibly can to be who everyone expects to see when they look at her.

But when it comes right down to it: she has Leonard, and she has Sheldon.

Online, though. Online she's as popular as Katie— As she always wanted to be. Katie has no place here. Katie, as far as she's concerned, is lying somewhere in a pile of ash. _Penny_ has a lot of friends, tons of Farmville gifts and pokes and birthday wishes. She's a Sagittarius now, and she almost never flinches when she announces it.

Penny also has a short list of news feeds she checks, thanks to the tricks she picked up from some random message board Howard liked. She creeps on the people from home, keeps an eye on her family. Never uses anything that can be traced anywhere between Pasadena and Omaha; she's lonely and homesick, but she's not stupid.

If she feels the phantom weight of a gun in her hand when Sheldon asks why she cares so much about people she's never met, well. That's not something Penny knows anything about, is it?

 

 

**xii. a year after the trial run**

The rooftop was crowded with people, with barely enough room to walk between them, let alone make one's way to the chairs on the far side of the pool where one could sit in peace. Sheldon crossed his arms and glared at the nearest cluster of revelers. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough one or more might move out of his way.

Leonard took another sip of his drink and clenched his teeth. "Could you at least _pretend_ you're not plotting everyone's doom?"

"No."

"Oh, come on!"

"There is absolutely no reason for me to be here, and although it's only barely semantically possible, there is even less reason for me to act friendly while you force me to spend an evening with drunken strangers. How did you even get invited?"

"I didn't, not exactly. And you're going to scare off all the girls!"

Sheldon turned in a circle, hands spread. "Yes, I wouldn't want to frighten off all the viable sexual candidates who are simply _flocking_ to our sides."

But Leonard had stopped paying attention and was smoothing back his hair. Sheldon followed his gaze to see the tall, shapely brunette who'd just stepped out of the stairwell.

"Oh, God," Leonard moaned. "She's here. Oh, God, she's coming over here! Quick, act like I said something funny!"

When Sheldon didn't, he started laughing, high and nervous like a hyena who'd just spotted the lioness on his tail. As the object of his latest infatuation squeezed past them with barely a glance, Sheldon snorted.

"Is it too late to downgrade your 'imaginary future children together' to 'unattainable fantasy children even were she to suffer memory loss and an inexplicable fondness for homunculi'?"

Leonard scowled.

 

 

**xiii. a year after only one ending**

Somewhere, in some other universe, where candy showers are common or the moon sets in the east, there is wind and sun and water and earth. These are here, too, just as always.

In one of those other universes, there are friends sharing a lazy meal and sweet kisses traded under a full moon. There's a hand sliding up the inside of a thigh. Soft whispers loosened in the dark. A rush of breath, shaken and shallow.

But not here. Here, there's no one left to see what remains. There are memories that float through the air, free to travel where they will, with no one left to catch them.

 

 

**xiv. a year after the team**

The ditch where they were waiting for the sign from Raj was rapidly filling with water. Cold water. Cold, muddy rainwater surging toward them from the blacktopped road, with eddies of rainbow oil slick on the surface, and grit that would stick to their skin long after the water dried.

"You know I have a delicate constitution," Sheldon said for at least the fifth time.

Penny ignored him. At least he was holding position, for all his complaining. She lowered her binoculars and gave him a once-over. On his belly in the grass as he was, it was a pretty nice once-over, too. His pants were plastered to his legs from the rain, and his ridiculous rain slicker wasn't enough to make up for the way his pale hands looked against the dark mud.

"You've got the same damn constitution I've got," Penny shot back.

She was every bit as miserable but leaving wasn't an option for either of them. They'd come here to do the job, to help the nice old lady who'd hired them to clear her son's name, and by God, they were going to do the damn job.

She leaned in close and jabbed a finger into Sheldon's shoulder. "Suck. It. Up."

"I still say we could have waited in the truck," he grumbled as he swiped her binoculars and peered across the road.

Penny flopped back down beside him and pulled her hat lower. "If you don't say one more word for the next half hour, I'll buy you the super-sized tub of VapoRub, I swear to God."

 

 

**xv. a year after the audition**

Sheldon keeps promising her that they'll be able to leave soon. Not in so many words, of course. He can't afford to be that sloppy. Neither of them can. But Penny can hear it, in the pauses between words he can't say. She feels it in the press of his lips against hers, so sure and strong.

She doesn't know what he does every day. Doesn't know where he goes. Penny stays in their room until someone comes to get her, and then she sits at her desk until someone takes her back. She learns to type by touch instead of sight. She learns to stop asking question, to stop expecting answers. She remembers to keep her brow smooth and her mouth turned up, and she never, ever forgets.

The food is nothing to write home about — as if she could, even if she wanted to. But she can't feel the hollows between Sheldon's wrist bones anymore, and the weight of him over her is as solid as she's ever felt it. Where once he was slipping away, fading away right in front of her, now he is real and sturdy and present.

Penny wonders how long it will be before Sheldon finally realizes his promises are as empty as the silence that engulfs them.


End file.
